Taking The Country Down With Them

In the run-up to electing a Speaker of the House, Moira Donegan considered the underlying reason for the GOP’s chaos. She wrote that “Republicans have no interest in public service, an ideological hostility to functional government and an insatiable thirst for attention.”

As Donegan also noted, there are few, if any, adults in the GOP’s room.

The “adult in the room” is a person willing to make difficult compromises, a person willing to sacrifice vanity for pragmatism, a person with a clear eye of their own priorities and needs and more determination to achieve them than a desire to make a point.

What the Republicans need, she wrote, is

someone more level-headed and serious, someone willing to accept imperfect compromises and to subvert his own ego for the good of the party, someone who might even possess a quality that passes for dignity.

Evidently, someone who isn’t currently a Republican.

Donegan was writing before the House GOP settled on someone who is emphatically not the adult she described. Instead, the GOP chose a previously-unknown theocrat with a dubious past, a set of extreme rightwing bigotries and a total lack of any leadership experience.

Donegan’s essay was written just after Jordan and Scalise had both failed to grab the brass ring, and she pointed out that these men– both “extremists and election deniers, comfortable with white supremacy and willing to discard democratic principles.”–had “ascended to what counts for leadership in the Republican conference, not in spite of the depravity of their positions, but because of them.”

They are the products of rightwing political, fundraising and media apparatuses that incentivize candidates to move further and further to the right – and which have left the Republican party itself both unable and unwilling to impose discipline on its politicians…

In a project that spanned decades, Republicans and their allies built a vast conservative media infrastructure and developed an impressive skill for shaping and whetting the ideological appetites of their audience, creating a more and more conservative base.

And as we now know, Republicans proceeded to elect extremist and election denier Mike Johnson as Speaker. Johnson was aptly desscribed by Jamelle Bouie as a right-wing fever dream come to life.

Mike Johnson is neither a moderate nor an institutionalist. Just the opposite. A protégé of Jordan’s, he comes, as you have doubtless heard, from the far-right, anti-institutionalist wing of the congressional Republican Party. And while he was not a member of the Freedom Caucus, he did lead the Republican Study Committee, a group devoted to the proposition that any dollar spent on social insurance is a dollar too much….

And what does Johnson believe? He is staunchly against the bodily autonomy of women and transgender people and supports a nationwide ban on abortion and gender-affirming care for trans youth. He is also virulently anti-gay. In a 2003 essay, Johnson defended laws that criminalized homosexual activity between consenting adults. In 2004, he warned that same-sex marriage was a “dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.” Last year, Johnson introduced legislation that has been compared to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, and he continues to push to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.

If Johnson is known for anything, however, it is for his tireless advocacy on behalf of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

As Bouie accurately notes, Johnson is Jim Jordan in substance but not Jim Jordan in style, which was evidently enough to win him the coveted title. Media, which had previously ignored Johnson, has begun an “after the fact” investigation.

The Guardian, for example, found that Johnson is “a believer in scriptural originalism, the view that the Bible is the truth and the sole legitimate source for public policy.”

Chalk up his elevation to the speakership as the greatest victory so far within Congress for the religious right in its holy war to turn the US government into a theocracy.

Since his fellow Republicans made him their leader, numerous articles have reported Johnson’s religiously motivated, far-right views on abortion, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights. But that barely scratches the surface. Johnson was a senior lawyer for the extremist Alliance Defending Fund (later the Alliance Defending Freedom) from 2002 to 2010. This is the organization responsible for orchestrating the 303 Creative v Elenis legal arguments to obtain a ruling from the supreme court permitting a wedding website designer to refuse to do business with gay couples.

There’s much, much more.

This delusional ideologue is Speaker of the House at a time when the U.S. faces a government shutdown and the global imperatives of two hot wars.

I suppose it could get worse, but I’m not sure how…..

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I Plan To Buy This Book

I have previously quoted Nick Hanauer, a billionaire with a clear vision of economic reality and a refreshing respect for data and evidence.  I first encountered him when he was supporting Seattle’s “Fight for $15.” He pointed out that jobs are created when workers have sufficient disposable income to purchase the goods offered in the marketplace. (If no one is buying your widgets, you are very unlikely to hire additional people to manufacture them.)

In the absence of any empirical evidence,” Nick explained, business owners kept repeating the same false threats over and over: “It’ll be a job killer. It’ll harm the very people it’s intended to help.” Even though these warnings had no basis in economic research, local media repeated the lies uncritically.

Seattle did, in fact, raise its minimum wage, and despite the dire warnings from opponents of the measure, its economy survived. Nicely.

Hanauer was introduced to Donald Cohen, who had noticed a similar effort– businesses arguing that safety regulations kill jobs–and the two of them teamed up to collect other examples. There turned out to be a clear pattern: whenever a social benefit has been proposed, powerful voices have warned that the policy would only hurt the very people it’s intended to help.

They decided to write a book, and enlisted progressive author Joan Walsh. The three of them have produced a volume they’ve titled “Corporate Bullsh*t,” tracing decades of (surprisingly similar) arguments from America’s captains of industry—against abolition, against child labor laws, against women’s suffrage….

There’s a pattern.

According to a letter sent by a friend describing the book (no link available), the book uses a lot of humor to make its point. As Hanauer is quoted,

If you think that you are going to talk the Chamber of Commerce out of saying that raising wages kills jobs by showing them the economic evidence [to the contrary,] you are deeply, deeply naive,” Nick says, adding that ridicule plays “an essential role” in debunking these claims and changing the public conversation for good.

A review of the book from The New Press goes into more detail:

From praising the health benefits of cigarettes to moralizing on the character-building qualities of child labor, rich corporate overlords have gone to astonishing, often morally indefensible lengths to defend their profits. Since the dawn of capitalism, they’ve told the same lies over and over to explain why their bottom line is always more important than the greater good: You say you want to raise the federal minimum wage? Why, you’ll only make things worse for the very people you want to help! Should we hold polluters accountable for the toxins they’re dumping in our air and water? No, the free market will save us! Can we raise taxes on the rich to pay for universal healthcare? Of course not—that will kill jobs! Affordable childcare? Socialism! It’s always the same tired threats and finger-pointing, in a concentrated campaign to keep wealth and power in the hands of the wealthy and powerful.

Corporate Bullsh*t will help you identify this pernicious propaganda for the wealthiest 1 percent, and teach you how to fight back. Structured around some of the most egregious statements ever made by the rich and powerful, the book identifies six categories of falsehoods that repeatedly thwart progress on issues including civil rights, wealth inequality, climate change, voting rights, gun responsibility, and more. With amazing illustrations and a sharp sense of humor, Corporate Bullsh*t teaches readers how to never get conned, bamboozled, or ripped off ever again.

I haven’t read the book yet, so I am approaching it with my own prejudice: the importance of credible empirical evidence.

If X is damaging, how do we know? Has it been tried? Under what circumstances? With what results? Have those results been replicated?

It is perfectly possible for a well-meaning policy to be unworkable or damaging–but an assertion to that effect needs to be backed up with evidence, not rhetoric.

Americans have a bad habit of giving credence to arguments made by the wealthy and powerful simply because those making the arguments are wealthy and powerful. It reminds me of that lyric from “If I Were A Rich Man.”  “The most important men in town would come to call on me, asking questions that would cross a Rabbis eyes–and it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong…When you’re rich they think you really know.”

Come to think of it, that goes a long way toward explaining why naive people listen to Trump…

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Fundamental Questions

Maybe it’s old age, or–even more likely– my growing concern that I may be watching human civilization disintegrate around me, but I increasingly find myself mulling over what i call the “fundamental questions.” How should humans live together? What sorts of institutional and governmental arrangements are fairest? What sort of society is most likely to facilitate human flourishing? What sort of economic system might ensure the subsistence of all members of a society without depressing innovation and productivity?

These aren’t new questions. But for those of us with grandchildren who will have to navigate this increasingly chaotic and angry world, they are critical.

Aristotle described the good society as one that encouraged and facilitated human flourishing. It’s been awhile, so I no longer recall how–or whether–he defined “flourishing,” but I can’t imagine people flourishing (however defined) under a system that ignored the requisites of what we call the common good.

I favor John Rawls’ approach to questions of the common good. Rawls–the pre-eminent political philosopher of the 20th Century–begins by insisting upon a “veil of ignorance.” The veil of ignorance is a scenario in which  individuals are placed behind a metaphorical veil that strips them of knowledge about who they will be and where they will live; they cannot know whether they’ll be rich or poor, talented or not, brilliant or mentally disabled, healthy or sickly, etc. From behind that veil of ignorance, the individual must design a society that they  would consider to be a just one no matter where they landed and no matter what their personal attributes.

The goal of the veil device, rather obviously, is to encourage respondents to think deeply about the structure of society, and to ignore to the extent possible the influence of his/her actual attributes and situation.

If Rawls is a bit too theoretical for you, several years ago my friend Morton Marcus penned a more accessible but no less important set of questions. Morton distilled the study of economics and economic systems into the question “Who Gets What?” In that essay, he pointed out that social and material goods are allocated in a more complicated fashion than most of us recognize. Depending upon the good being accessed, it might be allocated on a “first come, first served basis” or via the force/authority exerted by one’s government or family. The allocation might or might not be tied to merit–or at least, what society at a given time regards as merit.

Morton’s exposition was lengthy, but its major contribution consists of the reminder that “who gets what?” is a question that permeates our social and legal relationships and involves multiple decisions by government and the private sector.

Humans have a habit of thinking that the culture into which they’ve been socialized is “natural”–it’s “the way things are.” When “the way things are” is challenged– by technology, displacement, social change, whatever–most people will dig in, defending our world-views and beliefs about the way things should be. Typically, we believe they should be the way we think they’ve always been–the familiar cultural touchstones to which we’ve become accustomed and with which we’re comfortable.

What if we used these scary, unsettled times to consider what human flourishing entails, and to think about the kinds of systematic and social supports that would encourage that individual flourishing?

What if we responded to the uncertainty and chaos in Washington, D.C. and around the globe by purposefully retreating behind Rawls’ veil of ignorance, and trying to envision the outlines of a better, more just society?

What if we didn’t respond to uncertainty and fear by clinging more tightly to what we know, to our fears and prejudices and ideas about what constitutes merit, and instead pictured different ways of allocating goods, of answering the question “Who gets what?”

What if?

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Parting With Pence

I first met Mike Pence when we were both Republican candidates for Congress. We both lost, and he transitioned to hosting a televised talk show on which his “good friend” (!) Sheila periodically appeared– I was then director of Indiana’s ACLU. (Our discussions usually made me question the “attended law school” entry on his biography…)

Later, when Pence was Governor, former students of mine who were working for state government shared stories of prayer meetings in the Governor’s office–along with their impression that the Governor was basically uninterested in–and incompetent at–governing.

In 2016, as Pence began running for re-election, I had one of those ubiquitous “Pence Must Go” yard signs; I still believe that–had Trump not tapped him to appeal to Evangelical voters, “Pious Pence” would have gone down in well-deserved flames. 

Credit where credit is due: his 2020 decision to uphold the Constitution (despite his very tenuous grasp of its provisions) was laudable and courageous. To the extent Pence has a place in history, that one virtuous decision secured it.

But let’s get real: Mike Pence was never going to be President. 

The best reaction I have read to his withdrawal from the race was written by Mike Leppert.

It was a long shot bid from the start, so, its early end was no surprise. “It’s become clear to me: This is not my time,” was the apt comment he delivered at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference. I cannot recall agreeing with him more strenuously, but for more reasons than I expect he intended.

Pence’s time ended shortly after the 2016 election, as did the era of his entire brand of conservativism. The GOP shift toward the populist, inarticulate, grievance-based platform of today cannot credibly tout the Holy Bible as its guide. It never really could, but the party’s hate-based rhetoric of today has made the hard-to-take-seriously piousness of the party’s past an unfunny joke. Pence never wavered from his version of Christianity, though.

Message discipline could be his greatest asset. No matter how bad the message might have been, he was always entirely committed to it. So much so, the repetitiveness of it eventually would damage his authenticity on the stump. However, this skill was a difference maker for the ticket in 2016. He was the only guy who could stick to the script in that chaotic campaign, and I firmly believe that without this contribution, Hillary Clinton wins. 

As Leppert points out, other than an ability to repeat talking points, Pence’s speechifying leaves much to be desired.

Admittedly, I already know that I am about to disagree with him before he makes a sound. But that’s part of the task at hand in political speech: to move people. 

Try to recall a time he did that. Ever. There’s not a moment when he moved a crowd from hostile to simply opposed; from opposed to interested in listening more; or, from neutral to agreeable. On his own side of the aisle, he only succeeded at choosing a narrative he already knew his audience would applaud. As a political writer and communication consultant present in Indiana for almost his entire career, I can attest that I’ve never heard anyone say, “You really should have heard that Pence speech last night!” 

It wasn’t only delivery–his policy positions set him far apart from the general public. 

I’ve written about it before, but governmental control of anyone’s body is not conservatism. It’s pushing totalitarianism. Conservatives adopted the pro-life mantra without reconciling its fundamental contradictions with their platform. And Pence was one of that duality’s leaders. Again, a knock on his authenticity that his supporters are unable to see. 

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act and his monumental mishandling of it, is the event that defines him for many Hoosiers. It was a law that discriminated, by design, against the LGBTQ community. Pence knew that as well as anyone, but he knew he couldn’t get away with just saying that. So, he didn’t. And it cost him twenty points in his approval rating at the time, points he never got back. 

Leppert reminds us that during his congressional career, Pence failed to pass a single bill–that he has no policy victories to tout. For that matter, Leppert says Pence has a tendency to cause more problems than he solves. 

His political brand is highlighted by a career’s worth of troubles, some of his own making, others through his willful acquiescence. His sins are now ironically unforgivable, by a crowd that has never been more in need of forgiveness. 

As Leppert says, pretensions aside, today’s GOP is no longer remotely conservative.

Ironically, the party’s base hates Pence for the single act of his career that actually was conservative.

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Inter-Generational?

Whoever said that change is the only constant was on to something. In my own lifetime, I’ve seen enormous changes in everything from social mores, to communication, to travel…and I’m pretty sure that most of the people who regularly read this blog can offer lots of other examples.

Apparently, even the widespread belief in generational differences–the life changes that have formed the basis of innumerable poems and novels, that have spawned repeated admonitions of how “someone your age” should behave–is undergoing a change.

According to a report in Fast Company, BMW in Germany is pioneering a multi-generational workplace.

The growing potential of the multigenerational workplace challenges the traditional way in which we think about people of different ages and what we can do and accomplish at various points in life. We frequently hear people say, “I’m too young for that job,” or “I’m too old to learn a new gig.” When universal schooling and “old-age” pensions were first introduced in the 1880s, life became organized into a simple sequence of stages. Infanthood was all about growing and playing. School, and perhaps college, would follow, and then work. Before we knew it, we would be in retirement, looking back at the linear pattern that a full and orderly life was supposed to be, hoping that our children and grandchildren would successfully replicate the very same trajectory in their own life spans. Our time in this world became compartmentalized into a rigid series of distinct stages ever since.

I call this way of organizing our lives the sequential model of life. Over the past 150 years or so, every generation has been told to follow the exact same rules all over the world, from Japan to the United States, and from Scandinavia to the southern tip of Africa. Meanwhile, wars were fought, empires came and went, women gained the right to vote, and we set foot on the moon and dispatched robotic rovers to Mars. But we continued to live our lives in the same old way, one generation after another, in endless reprise.

This state of affairs is becoming obsolete due to long-standing demographic transformations.

People now live longer, for one thing. In 1900, average life expectancy at birth in the United States was 46 years; as of 2022, it’s 78. Americans who have made it to age 60 can expect to live an average of another 23 years, dramatically up from just 10 years in 1900.  As the article points out, that’s “another lifetime within a lifetime.” (Western Europeans are even better off, with a life expectancy at age 60 of 25 years.)

As anyone with eyes can see, not everything about our increasing longevity is positive–there are frictions between younger, taxpaying generations and those in retirement enjoying healthcare and pension benefits. Many people struggle with transitioning from one stage to another. We’re all subject to the destabilizing effects of technological change.

The article suggests that we think about life differently–that we rethink the ways in which “rising life expectancy, enhanced physical and mental fitness, and technology-driven knowledge obsolescence” are working to fundamentally alter the dynamics of the human life course, “redefining both what we can do at different ages and how generations live, learn, work, and consume together.”

The multi-generational workforce at BMW includes older workers–dubbed “perennials”–and the experiment has increased productivity.

The author predicts a massive transformation, a “postgenerational revolution” that will “fundamentally reshape individual lives, companies, economies, and the entire global society.”

As a result, we will witness the proliferation of perennials, “an ever-blooming group of people of all ages, stripes, and types who transcend stereotypes and make connections with each other and the world around them . . . they are not defined by their generation,” in the words of Gina Pell, a serial entrepreneur….

If people could liberate themselves from the tyranny of “age-appropriate” activities, if they could become perennials, they might be able to pursue not just one career, occupation, or profession but several, finding different kinds of personal fulfillment in each. Most importantly, people in their teens and twenties will be able to plan and make decisions for multiple transitions in life, not just one from study to work, and another from work to retirement.

Sounds great to these old ears…..

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